Doubled in a Week 🚀
Doubled in a Week 🚀
Plus, 💡 A narrative shift for Ethereum ETFs, 🚨 Election flutters and the feds show up, 🤑 Business in the billions on Solana’s DEXes, and more!
Happy Thursday! I’m Juan Aranovich, managing editor of Unchained.
In today’s edition:
🐶 Dogs and frogs go hard
💡 Ethereum ETFs: Payback time
🔗 BlackRock’s BUIDL: Branching out
🔥 ETH tokenomics: Bull market bounce
🛡️ Pouncing on Polymarket
👻 Phantom iOS: Ghost in the machine
📈 $6B in three days
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What’s Poppin’?
by Juan Aranovich
Memecoins Surge Almost 90%: The Risk Curve in Overdrive
Memecoins are going gangbusters, and it’s not surprising.
With bitcoin already up significantly, people are looking for the next thing that could deliver those eye-watering 10x or 100x returns — and memecoins are at the extreme end of the risk curve.
Dogecoin is up more than 100% since this time last week, and Ethereum-native Pepe and Solana’s Dogwifhat are close behind. Even PNUT, a coin based on a random squirrel, has hit an all-time high.
It’s bull market energy — where memes turn into multimillion-dollar assets overnight.
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ETH ETFs Finally Turn the Corner
Good news for Ethereum: its ETFs are seeing net inflows for the first time since launch.
For months, outflows and underperformance have weighed on ETH’s price, but with $241 million in cumulative net flows, that narrative might be shifting.
And, let’s be honest — crypto runs on narrative 99% of the time. Combine that with ETH’s recent price increase and the promise of staking-yield ETFs on the horizon, and an appealing picture starts to emerge for ETH investors.
BUIDL Goes Multichain
BlackRock’s tokenized BUIDL fund is expanding beyond Ethereum to multiple chains, including Arbitrum, Avalanche, Polygon, and OP Mainnet.
But the choice to include Aptos, a non-EVM chain, before Solana or Sui, is puzzling. Aptos doesn’t have the same developer activity or ecosystem scale as the other chains, making the decision seem counterintuitive.
Nevertheless, real-world asset tokenization is scaling fast, and adding these chains is a smart move to expand access and liquidity.
All ETH Needed Was a Bull Market?
Ethereum’s supply is finally deflationary again. After months of criticism about how layer 2s such as Arbitrum and Optimism have been “parasitic” to ETH tokenomics, all it took was a bull market to flip the narrative.
With gas fees rising and more ETH being burned than issued, ETH’s price could be primed to benefit from a positive feedback loop: more activity leads to more burns, reducing supply and driving prices higher.
What’s Poppin’?
by Tikta
FBI Raids Polymarket CEO’s Home
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has raided the Manhattan home of Shayne Coplan, the CEO of decentralized betting market Polymarket, according to a report by Reuters.
FBI agents executed a search warrant for Coplan’s SoHo apartment on Wednesday, seizing his phone and electronics after rousing the 26-year-old from bed.
The raid, which did not result in Coplan’s arrest, follows Polymarket’s surge in popularity in the run up to the US presidential election. Polymarket saw around $3.7 billion worth of bets placed on “Presidential Election Winner 2024.”
“It’s discouraging that the current administration would seek a last-ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents,” Coplan said in an X post after the morning’s events.
“Polymarket has provided value to 10's [sic] of millions of people this election cycle, while causing harm to nobody. We're deeply proud of that.”
The Department of Justice is investigating Polymarket over allegations it has allowed US-based users to bet on the site, according to a report by Bloomberg News.
Polymarket blocked people in the US in 2022 after reaching a $1.4 million settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for failing to register with it, although its site remains accessible to US users using VPNs.
Phantom Warns iOS Users of App Resets
Solana-based crypto wallet Phantom has pushed an update to its iOS app after a number of users experienced app resets.
In an X post on Wednesday, the team behind Phantom urged affected users to restore their wallets using their recovery phrases.
“Please make sure you always back up your recovery phrase in a secure location. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused and we're committed to making sure this won't happen again,” the Phantom team said.
Some iOS Phantom users were automatically logged out of their wallets after downloading a recent update, according to a report by The Block.
Last month, Phantom suffered an almost three-hour outage that resulted in some users seeing inaccurate balances in their accounts.
Solana DEX Volume Tops $6B for Three Days Straight
Decentralized exchanges on Solana have been a hotbed of trading activity this week.
Data from DeFiLlama show that DEXes on the blockchain have seen trading volumes top $6 billion over the past three days.
Over the past week, trading volume on the platforms has witnessed a 123% increase and more than $30.5 billion in total volume.
Raydium, which accounts for more than 60% of Solana DEXes’ trading volume, has seen a 127% increase over the past week. Its total value locked was $1.9 billion at press time.
Earlier this week, Syncracy Capital said Solana was undervalued relative to Ethereum based on several metrics, including real economic value and total application revenue.
The crypto hedge fund also noted that Solana generated more fees than Ethereum for the first time last month.
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Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍
⛔ Solana’s MEV protocol Jito suffered a brief outage due to high demand, temporarily raising transaction fees by up to 30x, but restored full functionality within an hour.
🐦 Robinhood added Solana, Pepe, Cardano, and XRP to its crypto offerings, signaling optimism about a more crypto-friendly US regulatory landscape following Donald Trump’s presidential victory.
🌐 Curve Finance launched its "Savings-crvUSD" stablecoin, enabling users to earn low-risk yields by overcollateralizing with assets such as ETH and Wrapped Bitcoin, aiming to enhance DeFi ecosystem efficiency and scalability.
🚀 Linea, an Ethereum layer 2 network incubated by Consensys, unveiled plans for a LINEA governance token by early next year to decentralize its operations through a Switzerland-based nonprofit, emphasizing user and developer collaboration.
⏳ Ethereum researchers unveiled "Smart Transactions," a breakthrough allowing contracts to adapt to future conditions, enabling advanced hybrid applications that merge web and blockchain functionalities.
The $$$ Corner…
🤖 Crypto-AI startup 0G Labs secured $290 million in funding, combining a $40 million seed round and a $250 million token purchase commitment to build decentralized AI infrastructure with support from major industry players.
💼 Hyla Fund Management launched a $30 million Latin America-focused crypto fund, aiming to navigate the region's unique challenges and opportunities by leveraging local expertise for early-stage investment in the fragmented market.
💳 Coinbase acquired stablecoin payment processor Utopia Labs to integrate its expertise into the Base layer 2 network and expand global onchain payment solutions via Coinbase Wallet.
What Do You Meme?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is up 3.9%, trading at $91,309
ETH is up 0.5%, trading at $3,187
BTC dominance: 57.51%
Crypto market cap: $3.14T
*All data as of today, 08:00 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
Recommended Read
CNN: A Trump bitcoin promise is what crypto fans once fought against. They love it anyway
Forbes: Big Banks Likely Gained More Than $1 Billion From Bitcoin’s Surge
DL News: How $10.5tn in deficit spending will pump Bitcoin to $1m, Arthur Hayes says
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